But oh my, it wasn’t easy, and the fragile and sickly Maple Leafs made another boatload of strange and curious decisions to make so many situations difficult that didn’t have to be along the way.

Still, the 3-2 shootout victory over the New Jersey Devils on the second Sunday night special of the season at the Air Canada Centre was the only part of the game sheet the Leafs needed to see.

“Well, we can breathe,” said head coach Randy Carlyle after the team’s first win in five games. “Hopefully this relieves a little stress for our hockey club, gets us back playing the way we’re capable of playing.”

Oddly enough, back on Nov. 8, exactly the same situation unfolded in the same arena between these two teams, with a shootout that night after a 1-1 deadlock over 65 minutes.

Back, then, it was also Cory Schneider in goal for the Devs and Jonathan Bernier for the Leafs, who were then riding high with a 10-5 record. Bernier stopped all three New Jersey shooters and James van Riemsdyk was the only Leaf to solve Schneider.

Well, it went exactly that way again Sunday night — a doughnut for Bernier, JVR with the only Leaf success on free shots — which was sufficient for the Leafs to get a rare win against a Metropolitan Division opponent.

For much of the night, it appeared to be a contest when both clubs were mustering all the energy they possibly could as the NHL season continues to compress the schedule to ridiculous degrees to fit in the Sochi Olympics.

(As an aside, it’s almost like the NHL is out to demonstrate to the players just how physically demanding their desire is to continue to participate in the Olympics, with South Korea set to follow these Russian Games in 2018.)

The Devils had played the night before and were skating in their third game in four nights. Ditto for the Leafs, who now play Tuesday in Boston and then back home on Wednesday against Buffalo to make it five games in seven nights.

And we expect terrific hockey out of these athletes?

At any rate, the Leafs led twice by 1-0 and 2-1 scores, but both times allowed the Devils to get back to even. For the 38th time this season in their 47th game, the Leafs surrendered more than 30 shots to an opponent, and they needed Bernier to be sharp well before the shootout to come up with 36 stops.

The Leafs, meanwhile, continued to drive Carlyle to distraction by always preferring the complicated play over the simple one.

Great example: with less than a minute left in regulation, Tyler Bozak won a draw cleanly against Travis Zajac. The puck went to Dion Phaneuf, who made a short pass to Carl Gunnarsson behind the net. With the Devils retreating into a neutral-zone trap, Gunnarsson had the entire left side with the choice to skate the puck out, to make a safe pass or to flip it out.

Instead, he reversed the puck to Phaneuf, and badly. Suddenly, the Devils were in possession, and buzzed the Leaf zone for the final 25 seconds before overtime.

Why? That’s what Carlyle would sure like to know.

Still, the Leafs did enough good things to come up with the win, and it wasn’t just van Riemsdyk’s favourite forehand-to-backhand flip shot coming down the right side in the shootout.

There were times when the home side showed more hunger and fight than has been the case of late, even with several players bothered by a case of either the flu or food poisoning.

“We’ve got to rev up our compete. That’s about as simple as I can put it,” said Carlyle. “That’s team toughness, that’s team competitiveness.”

Tim Gleason played his most solid game in just over 16 minutes of playing time with four hits and a blocked shot. David Clarkson created two top-notch scoring chances in the third. Bozak’s alertness produced his seventh goal off a loose puck created by van Riemsdyk in the first, and van Riemsdyk scored in the second when Schneider coughed up a big rebound off a Cody Franson wrist shot from 60 feet.

Bozak looked to have created a third Toronto goal just over four minutes later, but an absolutely preposterous goalie interference call by referee Ghislain Hébert on van Riemsdyk, who was neither in the blue paint nor interfering with Schneider, wiped that out.

“I was very surprised. I looked at it after (on video) and I’m still kind of wondering,” said van Riemsdyk. “(Hébert) gave me his thought. I asked him if he could watch it after the game and maybe next time he has a (Leaf) game he could apologize.”

Carlyle suggested that’s just the kind of thing his team has to deal with more effectively.

“The luck we had at the beginning of the year is now going the other way,” he said. “So we’ve got to find a way to manufacture points, to grind things out.”

By this time next week, the Leafs will be heading to warmer climes, the desert and the U.S. southwest, searching for sun and brightness in these gloomy days.

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